The present invention relates to cooling systems and, more particularly, to a cooling system for integrated circuits of modular electronic devices and to modular electronic devices adapted to be cooled by such a system.
As the components of integrated circuits become ever smaller and faster, the heat generated by these circuits increases, to the point that absent active cooling of the circuits, this heat is liable to damage or destroy the circuits. Fans for blowing air over integrated circuits to cool them long have been a feature of personal computers. Such forced air cooling is inadequate, in and of itself, for many modern integrated circuits. Therefore, liquids, such as water, that have much higher heat capacities than gases such as air, have begun to be used to cool integrated circuits. For example, Hamman, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,999,316, that is incorporated by reference for all purposes as if fully set forth herein, teaches providing a printed circuit board with internal conduits for a cooling fluid. The internal conduits supply cool fluid to, and remove hot fluid from, a heat transfer unit that is in permanent thermal contact with an integrated circuit (specifically, a processor) that is mounted on the circuit board. The internal conduits are provided with fittings for reversibly connecting the internal conduits to external conduits that supply cool fluid to the circuit board and send hot fluid to a heat exchanger to be cooled and recycled. Such cooling systems suffer from the disadvantage that the fittings are liable to leak, especially when one circuit board is swapped for another circuit board, thereby wasting cooling fluid and running the risk, if the cooling fluid is electrically conductive, of shorting out the integrated circuit.
It would be highly advantageous to have a cooling system for electronic devices that uses a fluid to cool the devices' integrated circuits without risking such leakage.